


Is It Raining Where You Are?

by Winterhawk616



Category: Marvel, Marvel (Comics), Marvel 616
Genre: Canon Compliant, M/M, Phone Calls, long distance, pinning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-13
Updated: 2020-10-13
Packaged: 2021-03-07 22:01:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,175
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26994835
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Winterhawk616/pseuds/Winterhawk616
Summary: Clint Barton, burdened by loneliness, calls an old teammate.Bucky Barnes, isolated in suburbia, picks up.//‘I called you to make sure you weren’t dead,’ Clint lied.‘Well, I’m not.’‘Good.’
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Clint Barton
Comments: 16
Kudos: 58





	Is It Raining Where You Are?

_Bucky watched as the basin overflowed and soapy water swept down into the metal sink. It took him by surprise how quick it rose up and near spilled onto the countertops. The basin was filled with rinsed dishes from his supper and Alpines food bowl. He watched it with softening eyes, the night drawing in and overtaking everything._

_‘I think…tomorrow,’ he said to no-one in particular, ‘I think, I’ll phone Sharon.’ This was the third time that week he had told himself that. Softly when no-one could hear him promise it. He sighed wiping his eyes against his forearm, avoiding his sud covered hands. ‘I’ll phone her,’ he said a little quieter. Bucky can’t recall the last time he spoke to someone who wasn't the cashier at the supermarket or Alpine. Can’t remember the last time he had picked up the phone when it rang. It rang a lot. It was ringing right now._

Clint had been staring at the contact in his phone now for months. Willing himself to click the little green phone icon that glowed mockingly. And now that it was finally ringing he couldn’t exactly believe he’d done it. It was raining in Brooklyn. A fuzzy sort of rain that drizzled down the streets, barely there, and dampened everything in a fog. The phone rang a few times before it disconnected.

‘You have reached the voicemail of-’ Clint cut off the phone and sighed. It shouldn’t have surprised him. Nat wasn’t exactly around at the moment. Was she even officially alive? Was she ever. He laughed at that, softly to himself, as the city buzzed outside. It was dark but never dark enough to feel truly alone.

_Bucky let the phone ring out, like he always did, as he drained the water slowly and dried his hands. His eyes wandered out of the window and into the backyard. Little glittery lights were swinging on the tall fence, Sharon had put them up when she was last here, it made the place feel more like a home. Bucky dumped the old rag onto the countertop and looked down at his phone. Two missed calls. Both from Sam. He let the guilt fall over him like it always did, and then, without a second thought, he picked up the phone and canceled the notifications. He knew Sam would wait a few days before trying again. Everyone had a cycle when it came to trying to get Bucky to talk. Sam would call twice every few days. Sharon once a week. Steve would text him. Tony would send him stupid texts babbling near incoherently about things Bucky didn’t understand. Nat hadn’t bothered to call; he didn’t mind. Bucky felt guilty, of course, he did, but it didn’t stop him from pretending everything outside that house didn’t exist._

Clint flipped his phone up in the air and caught it. Boredom. It wasn’t something he was used to as of late. There was always something. There was always a reason to get out of bed. Tonight everything was quiet and he guessed that was okay. He could deal with one night. Clint smiled at the little raindrops pattering against the glass and the headlights illuminating them in bright yellows and whites. There was a weight in his chest that wouldn’t shift, a heavy unmoving feeling of forlornness but he smiled past it out into Brooklyn. His gaze shifted down to his phone that illuminated back his contacts. Nat. He scrolled up. Barney. He laughed and scrolled down a smidge. Bobbi. The name made his breathe hitch. How had he left that? Next to his ex-wife was a name he hadn’t thought about for a while. Bucky Barnes. His smile grew a dash as he cocked his head at the fellow feeling.

_Bucky grabbed his phone and jacket before going out into the garden. Alpine followed at his heels weaving in between his legs. The air was hollow and lukewarm, but not inhospitable, as Bucky settled into the porch swing Tony had built back when he used to visit. Back when anyone would visit. Alpine turned in circles on Bucky’s abandoned jacket before laying down and slipping straight into a peaceful slumber. The place was so quiet and, while Bucky had grown accustomed to the hushed privateness of suburban life, he ached a little for the turbulent wails of an angry city. Now and then a screen door would shutter and a car boot would slam and a dog would howl at the wind but the rest of the world lay tranquil and unmoving. With a sigh, Bucky leaned back on the swinging chair and contemplated the moon in a motionless silence._

The moon was engulfed by dark clouds but its glowing silhouette finally peaked through while Clint surveyed the skies. He cursed himself for the sudden need for company. Why couldn’t he spend the evening getting drunk like normal middle-aged divorcees way past their prime? A beer did sound good. He glanced away from the sky and across his darkened living room to the kitchen. It was too far now and to risk slipping down off the artificially illumined window sill down into the murky floorboards would be to risk remembering how alone he was. A groan escaped him as he turned back to his phone and clicked the little green button for the second time that night.

_The phone rang from beneath Alpine which caused the cat to twitch. Bucky ignored it. After a moment of ringing, Alpine had moved onto Bucky’s lap and there was a text alert for a voicemail. Voicemails were an interesting thing for him. He knew he could secretly indulge in the contact he craved but prohibited. The yearning for contact always lost the battle, however, because he knew that as soon as he even started to hear their voices the entire facade would collapse in on itself. He picked up the phone to delete the message when he caught sight of the phone number. He didn’t recognise it. Sharon had tried on many an occasion to convince Bucky to keep numbers saved in his phone but he assured her he memorised any important numbers. Maybe she thought it was something about being a man out of time but Bucky knew it wasn’t that at all. ‘Curiosity killed the cat,’ he mumbled. He knew it could be a trick. Sharon using a burner phone or Sam purposefully trying to get him to pick up. He guessed, cautiously, that listening to the voicemail would suffice._

‘How is suburban life treating you?’ Clint mumbled. ‘You coaching the little league team yet? Do they let ex-assassins work with kids? I bet you couldn’t get a solid background check done. Nobody knows where you’ve been.’ Clint let himself laugh. ‘Sorry to call out of the blue but I was thinking about you and I thought I’d check in…which seems really stupid now that I’m doing it but-’ Clint rolled his eyes and groaned. ‘I hope you aren’t dead or…married to some soccer mom…or driving a minivan. Anyway, yeah…just uh call me back or don’t, y’know.’ Clint fumbled for a moment cutting off the call. He sat staring at the phone for a moment too long. ‘God, I hope I had the wrong number,’ he said to the empty apartment.

_Bucky listened to the voicemail three times before he called Clint back. Something other than his brain took control before he could argue. Clint picked up almost instantly. ‘I’m not dead.’ Bucky said quickly._

_‘That’s good,’ Clint mumbled down the line. Bucky could hear him shifting around in the background. ‘No crazy plans this Saturday evening?’_

_‘I live in the middle of a neighborhood watch area and my neighbors are all older than me…which is..’ Bucky trailed off._

_‘Yeah. Okay, I get it you’ve gone soft.’_

_‘What about you?’_

_‘I’m too lazy to move from my window ledge to grab a beer so I’m not holding out any hopes of bar hopping.’ Bucky let out a hearty laugh making Alpine jump. ‘Can you see the moon?’ Clint said after a long silence._

_‘Yeah.’_

_‘I can’t. I don’t think I’ve seen the moon in weeks.’_

_‘I’m sure it’s still up there,’ Bucky got up and walked out onto the lawn to get a good look at it. ‘It’s close tonight.’_

Clint shifted on the window sill and tried to picture the moment hundred of miles away. Bucky standing in the middle of his yard, or hanging out a bay window staring up into the perfectly clear and glimmering sky.

‘Is it raining where you are?’ Clint asked.

‘No, it’s a clear night.’ Bucky seemed distant on the phone as if every time he went to speak he pulled away from the phone. Clint wanted to lean in closer. ‘I miss the rain.’

‘You don’t get rain in Indiana?’ A glint of light and a crash of noise catches Clint’s attention across the street. A girl stumbling out of an apartment building shining the light from the inside onto the street for a second. She screams suddenly up at the rain and then runs off down the street in a blur of laughter.

‘We get rain,’ Bucky starts.

‘It’s just not the same.’ Clint answers turning back to the darkness of the apartment. ‘I know what you mean.’ He remembered the rain in Iowa. ‘When it rained back home it was loud. It punctuated the silences. Here, though, it halts everything.’

‘I remember, it wasn’t long after Steve died and I was out trying to find this fucking bakery he always talked about. He rabbited on and on about this god-damn bakery and I spent all day trying to find it. I couldn’t. The city was hot and loud and I liked it. It made it really easy to forget everything. But it started to rain. And everything was quiet in a flash.’

‘Makes it harder to forget things doesn’t it?’

‘Is that why you called me?’ Bucky cut in harshly, although his tone was still light.

‘I called you to make sure you weren’t dead,’ Clint lied, he knew Bucky wasn’t dead he just didn’t want to feel alone.

‘Well, I’m not.’

‘Good.’ Clint exhaled. ‘I tried to call Nat.’ The words spilled out like an overflowing sink. He could hear Bucky’s thoughts. So loud and obvious.

‘Clint-’

‘And, of course, she didn’t answer. I didn’t expect her to and I don’t think I actually meant to phone her. I was just sitting here in dark and I was…lonely. Which isn’t new, for anyone, but it felt weird. Like a new kind of lonely. I don’t know really what was going on maybe I had a fucking stroke or was possessed by some dude who forgot Nat’s dead.’

‘She isn’t dead,’ his voice steady and silent among Clint’s babbling.

‘Isn’t she meant to be? Or something? I can never keep up with her,’ Clint laughs. ‘It sounds like I’m some lovesick puppy pining after a girl but it’s not like that. You know, out of everyone, that it’s not like that. She’s…I just want to know she’s safe, Buck.’ Clint looks in towards the darkness of his apartment and realised he had left the front door unlocked.

_‘I’ve been keeping myself distracted,’ Clint grumbled after a moment of silence. Bucky was sat on the steps of the porch gazing up into the clear night sky as he listened. ‘Y’know, like we do, and I had been getting along fine but tonight everything was so quiet.’_

_‘Because of the rain?’ Bucky stated more than asked. Clint laughed and Bucky smiled. ‘It’s okay that you called her.’_

_‘I know.’_

_‘She’s fine.’_

_‘I know.’_

_‘I know you know,’ Bucky smiled._

_‘Do you?’_

_‘You’re an open book, Barton. Always have been.’ Something catches in the line, a hitch and then a shaky exhale of something. Bucky presses himself closer to the phone. ‘You still there?’_

_‘Yeah,’ comes the quietness. ‘I just was thinking about stuff.’_

_‘Care to share?’_

_‘Haven’t you got a lawn to mow? Or a hedge to trim.’ Clint bites back. Bucky would bite back but he knows better than to engage in a bitching match with Clint Barton._

_‘No lawn, no hedges,’ he replies softly._

_‘You’re not doing this whole suburban dad thing correctly then.’_

_‘Yeah? What makes you think that? I got a porch swing and…’ He trails of regretting the end of the sentence._

_‘And?’_

_‘A cat.’_

_‘A cat?!’ Clint yelped. Bucky can feel his evil grin through the phone and it makes his chest feel tight._

_‘Yes, a cat. Alpine.’_

_‘Alpine.’ Clint spoke slowly. Bucky let out a little laugh before they were plunged into a comfortable silence. Bucky thought about how nice it was, to have someone to enjoy the silence with._

Clint added a cat to the little picture of Bucky’s new life that was growing in his head. He has to ask for a picture. ‘Sometimes I miss it, the countryside in one direction and the suburban streets in the other. Y’know lying out in the grass in the darkness, the air fresh and no noise around for miles.’ Clint’s words were mystified and it seemed to take Bucky a moment to think of a reply.

‘You miss grass?’ Bucky asked.

‘That’s your take away?’ Clint mumbled and then after a second, ‘yeah, I miss grass.’

‘New York City has grass.’

‘New York City has mud with a sprinkle of grass that’s been stomped to death by city gunk and a million ugly tourist sandals.’ Clint vented with a nasty venom when the word ‘tourist’ left his mouth.

‘New York City has grass.’ Bucky repeated.

‘Me and my brother we used to sit out in this old overgrown farmland at the back of our house. It was good. We would lie out in the grass and stare up at the moon and tell stories and make each other laugh.’ Clint was always cautious to let memories of his childhood seep into his thoughts but he felt suddenly safe.

_‘Sounds nice.’ Bucky mumbled, walking over to the middle of his garden and leaning down to touch the grass. It was soft under this skin and he felt himself being pulled towards it._

_‘Grass was soft and I would always drift to sleep before we decided to go home and I’d wake up in bed.’_

_‘Clint,’ Bucky mumbled from the middle of the grass patch in his backyard._

_‘Yeah, Buck?’_

_‘Y’know how people are always scared of the idea of living the same day over and over again.’ Bucky’s voice was small and even he noticed how exposed it all sounded._

_‘Sure, I think they’ve made some decent movies about that particular trepidation in the human spirit.’ Clint laughed. Bucky felt himself unconsciously smiling back as if Clint could see him lying in the middle of the garden in the darkness with a blush spread across his nose._

_‘I’m being serious!’ Bucky finally snapped back._

_‘I know.’ Came a soft reply._

_‘Anyway, I’ve been thinking and I think I’d like it.’_

_‘What? Groundhog Day? It’s alright, I don’t think for a second it deserved to be up there with Schindler's List like it was but if you look past that-’_

_‘I think I’d like to live the same day over and over again.’ Bucky cut in._

_‘Why?’ Clint’s question serious and full of wonderment._

_‘Because then you’d know what’s coming y’know?’ Bucky tried to explain. ‘Of course, I’d have to be able to pick the day.’_

_‘Of course, that’s your prerogative.’_

_‘But, if I could just know what’s coming every single day and it was always going to be a good day and I could just live in it forever. Wouldn’t that be great?’ Bucky could feel how ridiculous his words sounded. How unprovoked the whole idea was. How stupid and exposed he was._

_‘What day would you pick?’ Clint avoids the question elegantly. Bucky is thankful for that in the end._

_‘Today’s been a good day, I guess.’_

_‘Yeah?’_

_‘Yeah, I mean I got up and I went for a run and then I watched TV for a bit and then I went to the store. I got home and made lunch and read a little and then Alpine got stuck under the sink again and by the time I had gotten them out it was already starting to get dark so I ordered Chinese food and then…well then you left me a message and-’ the uncontrollable rambling about the sub-par day was cut off suddenly._

_‘It sounds like a good day.’ Clint assured him._

_‘I don’t get many of them,’ Bucky whispered sleepily and his words were followed by an obnoxious yawn._

_‘You gonna fall asleep on me Barnes?’ Clint whispered, his chest wobbling at the intimacy of it all._

_‘You were right about the grass.’ Was all he said in return._

Clint leaned his head against the cold window and smiled fiercely at the picture that was finally complete in his head. Bucky Barnes, deadly assassin, lying on the grass in his little suburban home with his little cat trying not to fall asleep while on the phone with him. Clint had been feeling something, it was deep and unconscious and he barely registered it himself, since he and Bucky had hunted Nat down all that time ago. A feeling he hadn’t felt in a very long time and, if it wasn’t for that moment, he might never have realised it had been there.

‘Bucky,’ Clint said, abruptly.

‘Yeah?’ Bucky’s voice was barely there. Clint teeters on the edge of something but his mind betrays him in the end. His chest rises to the challenge but his brain cuts him short.

‘I hope you wake up tomorrow and it’s today again,’ he finally says. The line goes silent and all Clint can hear is the tapping on the rain and the faint sound of music. He thinks for a moment that he line’s gone dead or that Bucky had hung up on him when finally he speaks.

‘Night, Barton.’ Bucky’s voice comes loud and clear down the line with the soft words.

‘Night.’ The phone went dead and Clint all but threw it down onto the window sill beside him. His chest was like a pressure cooker, warm and expanding, he felt suddenly thankful for the cool pane of glass against his cheek. When the feeling finally settled and the rain let up and the noise of the city started to come back to him he finally went to bed. And In the darkness of the city, lonely but never alone, Clint Barton dreamt of a little white cat and the smell of freshly cut grass.

_When Bucky finally dragged himself to bed that night it wasn’t hard to drift off to sleep. His head filled with wonderful thoughts as he meandered off but one seemed to shine through truthful at last. Tomorrow will not be today; it will be better._

**Author's Note:**

> idk what this is if im honest. 
> 
> leave a comment if you liked it.


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